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Best bang! for Your Buck

Superlatives, most of which are suspect, are often bandied about when Portland is concerned — some claim that we have the most restaurants per capita, others say we have the most attorneys.

Anyone who believes either of those exaggerations is delusional. However, if there is one institution that has saturated the Portland market, it’s the ubiquitous hair salon and, guess what — most of them are fairly mediocre.

It took a couple of gay guys from San Francisco to shake up the industry here this year with their trendy salon, bang!, which is curiously located in the infamous Trelawny Building on Congress Street (yep, that’s the one next to Joe’s Smoke Shop and across from Video Expo). It’s currently the hottest (and perhaps most laid-back) salon on the peninsula.

"Our choice to open up here was deliberate," said Jeff Weeks, who does manicures, pedicures, and most of the design for the salon. "When we opened, a local paper quoted me as saying that we opened here because there is more color, but what I said is that this area is more colorful, and it is."

To be sure, getting coifed at bang! is an experience. Brett Boydston, Weeks’s partner and the locale’s only stylist, doesn’t overbook. He spends over an hour with everyone who enters. Plus, you don’t have to stretch for conversation — he’s engaging, interesting, and a master of his craft.

Speaking of craft, bang!’s dŽcor lends it uniqueness. Combs, blades, and razors are housed in Craftsman toolboxes rather than minimalist vanities; the waiting area is punctuated by old theatre seats (and, I might add, a decent selection of current magazines, rather than the omnipresent array of annoying hardcover hairstyle books); some of the lighting is fashioned from automobile air filters; and on the walls are a rotating selection of paintings from local artists.

"We didn’t want to be a stuffy salon down in the Old Port," says Weeks.

Portland’s Sue Cahill, one of the pair’s first customers, swears by the joint.

"I just love it. Brett takes his time and it’s incredibly inexpensive," she says. "Plus, with the location, there’s lots of free entertainment. Of course, a lot of the freaks walking by are yelling ‘fag’ at Brett, but he’s great at just laughing it off."

Bang!, 659 Congress St., Portland, (207) 774-8383.

Best Manifest Destiny

If you picked up a copy of the stalwart Downeast Magazine in October, you most likely read the article that marveled over the fact that most people are unaware that Portland extends beyond its urban peninsula.

The truth is, unless you’re a student or still living with your parents, most people have continued to favor the hustle and bustle of downtown Portland, one of the only spots in New England where the downtown area boasts a comfortable mix between commercial and residential property.

Problem is, if you’re tired of renting and you wanna buy, you’ve got to be a freakin’ millionaire to find anything that doesn’t come with rats and used syringes.

The answer these days is to go west, and for the best bargains, the neighborhoods off Brighton Avenue (or even Brighton Avenue itself) are some of the most desirable and still affordable places to look. In fact, in recent months, every single one of my friends who has purchased anything in the Portland area has done so on the Brighton side — and, yes, they say things are better there.

For instance, partners Shawn LaGrega and John Rand looked for more than a year for a house in-town Portland but eventually settled for something bigger and more affordable in an area that they never really considered.

"We were definitely being very selective. We knew what we wanted and we took a lot of time looking," said LaGrega, who added that, after looking at dozens of houses on the peninsula, the couple knew that they would have to broaden their horizons and, as it were, look a little closer to the horizon.

"Yes, we definitely thought that we were compromising because we didn’t think that Brighton Avenue was the ideal location."

Neither LaGrega nor Rand were actually looking for a home that was within walking distance of a 7-11 or dangerously close to railroad tracks.

"But now we think it’s wonderful and we got so much more for our money."

Richard Jordan, 28, who was initially bent on living on the peninsula actually made a bid on a house on Rowe Avenue before Stephenie, his wife of only a few days, even saw the place.

"First of all, it had a yard and more than just pigeons show up at our bird feeders," says Jordan.

"Plus, when I go home, I don’t have drunk people running into my car."

Best Gift Certificates

I’m intimidated by record stores. Every since I got snubbed by a clerk sporting Robert Smith’s haircut at the Lakeforest Mall Waxie Maxie’s ¾ I was buying Howard Jones’s Dream into Action, apparently not hardcore enough for Mr. Goth Counterman ¾ I’ve felt sure my tastes were too glaringly unhip, my knowledge too spotty. When former Bull Moose clerk Tony, of the wild Afro, wrinkled his nose at my purchase of Throwing Muses’ The Real Ramona, I called it quits. I started buying albums from the BMG compact disc club under a pseudonym.

And then I got this beautiful record player: a 1970s Pioneer, which came complete with my dad’s entire album collection ¾ about 97 percent classical, and three percent bluegrass and folk. I decided to listen through the whole shebang, alphabetically. I stopped into Enterprise Records, and jumped when owner Bob asked me if I was looking for something in particular. I braced myself for some withering record-store-aficionado remark when I said, yeah, actually, I’m looking for a recording of the Threepenny Opera.

He pointed me straight to an unscratched copy, and offered to play me a Lotte Lenya solo album. Standing there, smoky-voiced Lenya pattering away in German, I felt like I’d been inducted into some kind of secret society — until I ventured further and asked for a gift certificate.

"Oh, yeah, gift certificates," Bob said, reaching underneath the counter, and emerging with a fistful of grubby plastic squares. Stamped hastily with a smudged "Enterprise Records" logo, the amount written in magic marker, the "certificates" fanned across the heap of albums. I selected $25, and was suddenly, out of nowhere, filled with love for record stores, and the cranky, anachronistic guys that run them. I pictured the scenario, Bob hacking up some plastic section dividers and stamping the hell out of them to chuck at some annoying, clueless customer ¾ a customer like me.

Whether it happened that way or not, they are by far the finest gift certificates I’ve ever seen. And they’re recyclable.

Enterprise Records, 613 Congress St., Portland, 773-7672.

Best Legal Resin

It’s easy to pass Abdul Ali’s Discount Grocery Store on Washington Avenue without noticing it — the sign is small and the structure looks slightly residential. But step inside the squat, blue building and you’ll find a bustling Somali grocery store, chock full of otherwise-impossible-to-find items.

Take Shaarawi Bros. brand mastic gum. The chiclet-sized pellets have a subtle, woody, plant-like taste, like you’re chewing a little ball of pitch from a tree. In fact, it is made from the resin of the mastic tree, which grows mostly in Greece and Turkey. Not only is it purported to be a natural balm for stomachaches, ulcers, and heartburn (move over Prilosec), mastic gum has such a mellow, understated non-foody taste that it’s the perfect thing to pop following a heavy meal. Refreshing in an un-Altoid sort of way.

Ali stocks his store according to his clientele’s requests, and since his customers hail from all over — Africa, the Middle East, India — there’s always quite a variety. Find Indian spices that Hannaford hasn’t even heard about, dried apricot paste and other dried fruits, overseas Nestle products, and teas. They also carry beauty products, henna powder ($4.99 for a big jar), Islamic prayer clocks, and phone cards (these are worth checking out: Hello Africa! cards, for instance, offer some of the best rates in town for locations in Africa and Jamaica).

Amir’s Kalonji Oil is good for whatever ails you. In fact, the seeds from which the oil come supposedly "contain the cure for all diseases except death." Homeopathic remedy aside, kalonji oil is also used in aromatherapy and as a therapeutic massage oil. And here’s a little secret for the men out there who have lost their get up and go. It’s a little thing called Sultan’s Paste for Strength, a combination of honey and 40 herbs that "prevents sexual inefficiency and provides self trust."

Discount Grocery Store, 30 Washington Ave., Portland, (207) 774-6882.

Best Literary Retail

Portland has bookstores named for what’s in them (Books, Etc.), a homegrown favorite author (Longfellow Books), and a body of water (Casco Bay Books), but what about a store actually named for a book? Well, welcome to Strange Maine.

Brendan Evans, the store’s owner/operator, is a big fan of the odd, occult, sci-fi, and horrific, so he took Strange Maine, his favorite collection of horror and sci-fi short stories and randomly eerie non-fiction all based in Maine — and actually published by Phoenix freelancer Lance Tapley in 1986 — and designed a store around it.

"That was the genesis," he says. "When I was a kid, my parents wouldn’t let me read much horror or science fiction, and they had Strange Maine in the house, so that was the only horror that I could get my hands on. I read it three or four times."

Strange Maine is much more than a bookstore, however. It’s a place where you might find just about anything.

Like pulp fiction from the ‘50s, or random trading cards, or Godzilla and below-B-movies, or discs by locals bands like Glade Swope or Ogre, who declare Strange Maine "our favorite store," and who held an after-party there following their November 1 release of Dawn of the Proto-Man.

See, the place is open late, too, which is strange for Congress Street. People regularly plan to come there late at night, under the cover of darkness, as an outing. In fact, after opening April 1, Evans kept the place open from noon to midnight, seven days a week.

Damn, those are some long hours.

Now that things are slowing down for winter, however, you can find the place manned from noon to midnight, Wednesday through Saturday, and from noon to 6 p.m. on Sunday. Keep an eye out for happenings, though. There’s a signing with David Kish, author of the underground comic, Hoopleville, coming up, and they’ve been known to throw up a Jaws festival, or maybe a Lovecraft Lounge sort of thing.

They’ve even had some strange occurrences with Strange Maine: "When I opened, the guy from Paperback Traders came over and gave me a copy of the book, just as a welcoming gift, which was great," says Evans. "But also, somebody shoved a copy through the mail-slot wrapped in clear plastic, before I even opened, and I still have no idea who put it there. There wasn’t accompanying note or anything."

Strange.

Strange Maine, 576a Congress St., Portland, (207) 771-9997.

Best Place to Soundproof Your Home Studio

So you’ve got this dilemma: Your landlord said you could rehearse in the basement of your building, but then after the first night he called back and said, jeez, he didn’t know how loud it was going to be, and the other tenants were hitting the roof. You don’t want to go to your bass player’s mother’s house in Buxton, and your buddy who has a real rehearsal space is still pissed about the time you left the door unlocked when you left and someone cleaned it out.

Sounds like an unsolvable problem, but, in truth, the solution awaits just north of Exit 8, at the corner of Riverside and Warren, where the Carpet & Rug Depot nestles in the off-price mecca of the Exit 8 Value Mall. Nowhere else in Portland can you find Quonset huts full of clearance-priced futons, sofas, or tiles — but that’s not what you’re there for. You’re there for the plywood bins sitting out in the parking lot stuffed with carpet remnants that start as low as five bucks. If you’ve got 50 bucks and access to a pickup truck, you can be in and out of the Depot in 20 minutes with an additional layer of acoustic insulation between your drums and your fellow tenants’ eardrums.

Or you could get fancy and actually go into the building, where you can buy acres of carpet for $4.99 a yard. And the wonders of the Depot don’t stop there. They have shags in every color deep enough to lose a Chihuahua in, patterns that look like bad Futurist art, and those woven oval area rugs you remember from Grandma and Grandpa’s camp.

Sure, they have the upscale stuff too, but who wants to hang a $1000 Oriental made by child slaves in Pakistan on the roof of their studio space?

Think frugal. Think nylon. Think the Depot.

Carpet & Rug Depot, 659 Warren Ave., Portland, (207) 772-9680.